Conventional therapeutic packs may be used to provide a therapeutic treatment to an area of a living body to be subject to a cold or heat treatment. For example, therapeutic packs may be used to treat sports related injuries, by providing a cooling or heating temperature to the injured area.
Ice packs and heat packs are known, but a shortcoming of such packs is the shock to the skin (either cold or hot) when such packs are placed in contact within the skin directly from a freezer or heating unit. It is known to wrap a towel around an ice pack, for example, to prevent the shock of cold, or even skin damage, from occurring during contact with a cold pack. Heat packs may be dangerous and can cause burns on exposed skin. It is known to provide a protective sleeve to place over a heat pack or cold pack, but this requires the sleeve to be located when such a pack is removed from a freezer or heating unit, such as a microwave.
Such packs are also known to freeze into a solid block, requiring striking or crushing forces or a period of waiting in order to allow the phase change materials to separate or become slushy.
U.S. Pat. No. 4,044,773 provides a way of dividing phase change material by striking the bag, for example. The bags used to contain any of these phase change materials is selected to permit such rough handling without spilling the contents. As a result, the packaging does not permit the bag to “drape” as that term is known in the art of fashion.
Herewith, the only materials that are described as having the characteristic of “draping” or the ability to “drape” are comparatively thin fabrics made of woven textiles. Some examples are given of materials that drape, and other examples are given of materials that do not “drape” as that term is defined herein.
For example, plastic films that have adequate strength to serve as bags to contain therapeutic modules are known to not drape. Such sheets are not textiles and are not woven. It is thought, without being limiting that it is necessary to have threads capable of movement, such as in a woven textile, in order to create a fabric that drapes. Some textiles having a thickness not greater than four thousandths of a inch (0.004″) are known to drape, such as textiles made of polyethylene, cotton, polypropylene and nylon threads/fibers.